The use of agricultural products and wastes for energy and industrial materials is a topic of growing importance throughout the world. A new issue of the prestigious Journal of Industrial Ecology (and available free in full text at http://mitpress.mit.edu/jie/bio-based ) examines the environmental implications -- good and bad -- of increased use of biobased materials and fuels using the concepts and tools of industrial ecology. The Journal is a peer-reviewed international quarterly published by MIT Press, owned by Yale University and headquartered at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
Articles in the special issue analyze the opportunities, processes, and environmental impacts of biofuels, bioplastics, biolubricants, and biosurfactants. Government initiatives to support biobased products are summarized and leading biobased product companies are profiled. The special issue also features a look at the predecessor to today's efforts to make greater industrial use of agricultural crops and residues, the American chemurgy movement of the 1920s and 30s..TABLE The research published in this issue suggests: -- Using ethanol fuel made from corn stover, the residues left over in corn fields after the grain is harvested, to produce a mixture of ethanol and gasoline (known as "E85"), can yield important benefits. For each kilometer fueled by the ethanol, a car uses 95% less petroleum, greenhouse gas emissions are lower, but air quality impacts are mixed. -- Surprisingly, making composite materials and plastics from biobased resources is superior to energy production from energy crops in terms of energy savings and greenhouse gas emissions, when these impacts are computed per unit of agricultural land rather than per unit of product. -- New analysis methods can, without detailed product-specific information, predict the environmental performance of bioproduction strategies such as capacity to displace fossil fuel use. These tools can rapidly screen new processes and identify promising opportunities.
Robert Anex, associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, USA served as the guest editor for the special issue. Support for the special issue was provided by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
:Journal of Industrial Ecology:
